Butte semi-weekly miner. [volume] (Butte, Mont.) 1886-1890, 1887-04-30
THE SOLDIERS At DINNER.
Dalzell Writes to the Chi1drt
About the Boys in Blue.

ABOUT the Boys In B1u0s
Would you like to see the soldiers at din
ner in their camp? They are called Boys in
Blue, for their coats and p~antaloons are
bright blue and so are their caps They all
dress just alike. There are thousands of
them. Did you ever see 10000 big, grown
up boys in a field together? I lave seen
more that that take dinner in camp. They
keep their caps on their heads while they eat.
They sit on the green grass. They have no
table to eat off. You see no table cloths
there. Their cups are made of tin and so are
their plates. They have no saucers, and
most of them USE no knives or forks. They
use their fingers and pieces of boards to eat
with.
Is not that queer?
Look on their plates. There you sec on
each plate a piece of fat pork with not a bit
of lean, and four spoonfuls of beans, and
four or five white crackers as big as your
saucers. These crackers are hard as q rock,
but the boys have strong, sharp teeth. Look
in Their tin cups. They are full of hot, black
coffee, without any milk. Sometimes they
have sugar to put in, but no milk. They
have no COWS in the army to give milk.
They kill and eat all the cows they can get.
They do not always have such a good din
ner. That one was a nice 18th of July din
ner. Sometimes they have had no plates or
cups, n nothing at all to eat but hard
tack, which they had in their pockets, and
this they had to eat as they marched along
the road, for the man who was their master
would not let them stop long enough to get
dinner.
One day they marched thirty miles and
had not a bite to eat, They were awful
hungry, and some of them said bad words.
Some of them found some grains of corn
which the horses had left, and they cracked
that with their teeth. They said it made a
good dinner. Another time they were going
along very hungry n found q patch Of
turnips and pulled them all up and ate them
raw. Many times they went to bed on the
cold snow in winter without any supper.
Soldiers have no houses. They sleep on
blankets out Of doors every night, and when
they get cold they get boards or rails and set
them on fire to get warm. They live out Of
doors just like pigs and cows. Sometimes it
makes them sick, and 100, 900 of them got
cold and died. Their fathers and mothers
did not see them-they we're so far of. You
know they all had guns and had to fight for
you and the flag. Many times they were in
battle when the guns were shooting all day
and all night n had not a bite to eat. So,
o see, they had a hard time. Thousands
of them got killed and needed no more din
ners.-Private Dalzell in Cleveland Leader.
Portraits of Ideal Ancestors.
An artist speaking on this subject the other
day said:
SIT was only the other day that I had a
request from a wealthy patron of mine who
had very little idea Of art to paint the por-
trait of an ideal ancestor for him, that he
might hang it i'll his parlor. He was willing
to pay a good price, so l finally consented,
and gave him a very respectable ancestor at
q moderate cost. The picture now hangs on
the walls of the moneyed mans drawing
room and receives its due attention from
visitors and guests. l have since heard that
quite a business is carried on by a little Ger
man in the Bowery in the sale of ancestral
portraits. He lives in a dingy subcellar full
old moldy paintings and dust and cob
webs. He will supply you with an ancestor
at a few hours notice, from a king and a
queen down to a humble squire. He attends
all the old picture sales and buys old, cracked,
scanned and discolored portraits for almost
nothing. These constitute his stock in
'In the first place the pictures are unde-
niably old, and what shoddy family but
g and blood? These pictures
are altered to suit the taste Of the purchaser
by inserting a coat of arms, and perhaps
some trifing alterations in the face.
The changes make the picture unrecognizable
from it's former condition, and the host who
the portrait to his guests after din
ner can lie as much as he wants to about the
relic with little chance Of ever being
found out. It is certainly true that this age
is a progressive one, where a man can pur-
chase a coat of arms for a small sum and a
neutrality-suspicious., slightly damaged
for $40 or $15."-New York journal.